


Women Have No Past, Just A Grand And Glorious Future

by SeaOfBones



Category: Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner
Genre: Character Study, Dubious poetry, Flashbacks, Gen, I couldn't decide which relationship to focus on so I wrote them all, Yuletide 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:42:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28047879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaOfBones/pseuds/SeaOfBones
Summary: Katherine remembers the first time she went to a poetry reading.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Women Have No Past, Just A Grand And Glorious Future

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fajrdrako](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fajrdrako/gifts).



“Katherine!” Artemisia called from the bookshelf. The Duchess Tremontaine looked across the room from where she was sitting in bed, stirring her chocolate and reading her letters in her fine pleated nightdress. Artemisia had arrived first thing in the morning, anxious to read through the newest scene of Katherine’s latest commission together.

But the book she had pulled from the shelf was not the sheaves of script but a slim volume, pale pink, with a woodcut of a fruit bowl stamped on the front. It took Katherine a moment to recognise it. A fleeting souvenir of an intimately small memory.

“I was there too,” Artemisia said. “Why, I must have missed you.”

“Oh, Marcus and I were quite far back. I expect we slipped out of the door without many people noticing,” Katherine replied, balancing her pen across the roll of waxy blotting paper on the bedside table. Or, considering how she had been dressed, Katherine wouldn’t have been surprised if Artemisia’s eyes had missed her entirely.

Still, she took it from Artemisia’s hands when she brought it closer. Like every artefact of those first few months, it was engorged with memories – of her uncle and St Vier before they’d left, of every precarious emotion those months had pushed her through. She cracked the volume open and, with idle voice, began to read aloud.

\---

“ _Dicing_?” Katherine had said, angry colour blossoming in her cheeks as she tamped the emotion from her voice. First this _stupid_ insistence that she learn the sword, and now _dicing_? Her uncle was going to ruin her. She would have no dresses, and she would die in a Riverside gambling den. Oh, her poor mother.

The Mad Duke of Riverside shrugged coldly. He clamped the small, round cup down against the table soundlessly. Katherine thought of herself hefting the sword as Venturus barked at her, and how much effort it took to make any movement look so casual.

“I’m not teaching you how to play,” he drawled. His long fingers curled around the cup as he drew it back. A pair of fours glinted up at her from the hastily cleared table, the once-glimmering gold paint shot through with faint cracks. “I’m teaching you how to cheat.”

“Why?” she asked, lifting her chin defiantly. Her uncle, as always, didn’t trouble himself with returning her gaze.

Even when he did look at her, she could hardly be sure it was Katherine he saw. Surely, if he was truly conscious that it was his niece he was speaking to in such a manner, a young lady under his care, he would not act in such a way. It wasn’t… it wasn’t _proper_. Surely nobody could be so _mad_ that they would forget their manners.

“Because I’m bored,” her uncle replied. “And Marcus is out running errands.”

Katherine clenched her hands in her lap, against her stupid tailored trousers.

“On one condition,” she said. It was not her place to make demands, her uncle had reminded her of that enough times. But if _he_ forgot his manners so easily, then so could she. This was clearly the whole reason he’d called her here. The Mad Duke, despite all of his parties and his friends and servants, was _bored_. “I want to go to a poetry reading at one of the teahouses in town. A _proper_ one, not one of your drunk friends at one of your parties.”

The Mad Duke looked through her, the heavy fronds of his lashes shadowing his eyes. “I have no idea why you’d want to put yourself through that,” he replied. “But do as you please.”

He scooped the dice back into the cup. Katherine, reluctantly, sat straight, and watched.

\---

The salon was on just the very edge of the fashionable part of the city. The tables were of wrought iron lace, painted over with white, and as Katherine worried the tip of her fingernail against the surface, she noticed where thick globs of paint clung over the more delicate details. Beneath her other hand rested the pamphlet they’d been handed at the door. The cover was pale pink, with a very fine woodcut of a bowl of fruit stamped on the front, bound together by long, hand-sewn stitches.

She lifted the engraved silver spoon, and stirred the small pot of chocolate. This was the outing she had begged for. To be out in society, appreciating the arts as a lady might. Admittedly she and Marcus were at the back of the room, hardly being seen out in society at all, but owing to what she'd been forced to wear she was quite glad of it. If anyone turned towards them, they might think them a pair of pageboys or squires. She had to admit that being in disguise was quite thrilling, even if she thought she would have been happier wearing a dress.

“I'm very excited, Marcus,” she declared. “Are you excited?”

“Have you read any of this stuff before, Kate?” he asked, dubiously distant, holding his own pamphlet half-open with his thumb.

“No,” she replied. “That's the _point_ , Marcus. Now drink your chocolate.”

He flicked the book shut. He was as distant as her uncle sometimes, and just as annoying. But at least he'd agreed to come out with her, so she didn't have to sit alone. In the life she'd wanted when she came here, she might be sitting here with a friend of equal age and eligibility. But, well, the last person of that kind she'd approached had been Artemisia Fitz-Levi, and that visit had gone... badly.

“I'm sure there must be at least one decent poet in Riverside,” Marcus replied, taking up his cup. A man in a feathered cap took to the stage, and the murmuring crowd quieted.

For the moments before he began to speak, Katherine was filled with true delight.

\---

“ _Sprouting grapes on the vines of delight_ ,” Katherine read. “ _I pluck her when she is ripe._ ”

Katherine closed the book, the campfire warming her face. St Vier said nothing, and speared another chestnut from the skillet over the fire with his paring knife.

“Well?” she prompted.

“You don't like it, do you?” St Vier observed.

Katherine said nothing.

“You shouldn't take my word on poetry, though. If you really want to know if it's any good, Alec is the one to ask.”

“ _Alec_ hardly speaks to me,” Katherine protested.

In truth, Katherine had been hoping St Vier would be able to explain why the room of nobles had clapped even as she and Marcus had drained their chocolate in underwhelmed silence and left. She had been far too prideful to admit how uneasy that first much-wished-for outing had made her feel.

It spoke so much of young ladies in their bloom, as she was. She had wanted it to sing to her, but…

When she had read to St Vier, when she tried to mimic the cadence in which she had heard it, she could only think of the poet’s self-aggrandising delivery, of watching all of the young ladies her age in the audience titter as he looked condescendingly out into the crowd. They were all silly little girls, laughing along with jokes at their own expense. And Katherine was no better.

“Read me something else, then,” St Vier said. He speared another chestnut, and offered it to her. She took it with night-cold fingers, the crackling shell flaking into the palm of her gloves, and turned to the next poem. She tried to push the poet from her mind as she spread the pages with her free hand, the words dancing in the light and shadows of the fire.

\---

“ _Apples red with temptation’s blush_ ,” Artemisia read over Katherine’s shoulder. _“The pale underneath revealed with a cut._ The language is so beautiful, isn’t it? Like a lovely garden.”

“I think you read it better, Artemisia,” Katherine replied. She meant it. No scorn, only her sincerity. She read as if she was the garden, celebrating itself.

“Oh, don’t be silly, Katherine,” Artemisia laughed. “Anyway, it’s your turn to read.”

As her time as the Duchess stretched into the future, Katherine’s first months in the city began to seem strange. When she was still Stella, before she ever considered herself Fabian or Tyrian. The naivety of the dreams she’d arrived with were precious to her, even in such short a time as a year later. She wanted to protect the Katherine that had wanted to love the city, much as she’d wanted to protect the Artemisia that had suffered cruelly under it.

The city would never be an easy place, as much as she worked as her uncle had to make Riverside fair and free. With Artemisia and Marcus by her side, she would make these sour memories sweet.

Katherine turned the page, and took her turn at reading. The Duchess of Tremontaine would take these fragile words, these fragile memories, and make them as she wished them to be.


End file.
